How does assessment planning promote teaching excellence?

In brief

Planning and aligning your assessments with your learning outcomes is central to effective assessment design and is key to good course design. In this way, you ensure that your assessment tasks match and measure the most essential knowledge, skills, and values you intend for your students to develop in your course.

Assessment is an important and influential factor in shaping the student’s learning focus. As an instructor, you probably get asked, “Will this be on the exam?” Students tend to make decisions on what to learn, when to learn, and how much time to spend on certain topics based on how they will be assessed. Therefore, your assessments should convey the most important areas you want students to focus on, and the way to achieve this is to ensure they are directly aligned with your course learning outcomes.

Course alignment

In an aligned course, each learning outcome has at least one (but preferably more) ways of assessing student learning. This alignment process also helps focus the design of assessments so that you are measuring exactly what you intend to measure and that there are no unnecessary assessment tasks. Table 1 is an example alignment table from a Business Information Technologies Course where students have to explore the role of information technology in business organizations. This table exemplifies how each learning outcome is assessed with each of the course assignments and final exam. Note that, as a best practice, each learning outcome should be evaluated a minimum of two times in a course. In this example, we can see that each assessment evaluates at least one course outcome. Depending on how many learning outcomes your course has and how specific they are, each assessment can evaluate a single outcome or multiple outcomes, as you see fit.

Table 1. Course alignment table showing how each outcome will be assessed.
Source: COMM 226: Business Technology Management (Supply Chain & Business Technology Management Department, Concordia University)
Learning outcomes Assignment 1 Assignment 2 Assignment 3 Final exam
Describe the main concepts of information systems and related concepts Business process modelling and notation

Use an ERP software

 Database design for a business case Theory-based multiple-choice questions and application-based questions
Describe the relationship between information systems and competitive advantage Use an ERP software Use of business analytics with Excel and Tableau as above
Identify the major trends in IS technologies such as SCRM, SCM, and ERP and their use to improve business efficiency, increase profits and support other business functions as above as above
Identify how to use E-commerce and E-business to create new or improve existing business Business process modelling and notation Use of business analytics with Excel and Tableau as above
Demonstrate how systems can enhance business decision-making and help create business partnerships Use an ERP software for procurement Implementation of a database system and reports as above as above
Describe how organizations analyze, develop, acquire and implement information systems Business process modelling and notation Design and implementation of a database system as above as above
Discuss issues related to computer crime and security, and information systems ethics as above Implementation of a database system and reports as above as above

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Course Design by Centre for Teaching and Learning, Concordia University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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